Don’t want to return home, says ‘abandoned’ father

“I stayed on Gandhi Mandapam Road in Adyar, near a tea shop. I left home at night and remember climbing a flight of stairs. But I got lost and I have no memory of what happened after that,” said a quivering Gopal, holding onto a bamboo stick real tight even while seated on a wheelchair at the Little Drops Old Age Home in Paraniputhur near Mangadu.

Within moments, however, the old man, believed to be around 70 years, shook his head. Then, the story changed. “I used to live with my relatives in Kotturpuram.

They said they didn’t want me anymore as I was troublesome, and brought me to Adyar stating that my son lived there.

They left me with him. He took me to the hospital and then to the temple. He bought me tiffin, and asked me to wait there until he got done with work. But he never returned. It was then that the police picked me up,” Gopal told DT Next.

“No one would feed me. Everyone said I am a burden.

They asked me not to return home,” he said. As his memory played truant, Gopal is unsure of a lot of details but managed to remember that he used to work as a mechanic before turning into a lorry driver. “The house we lived in was my son’s. I don’t remember if he had bought it or was staying there on rent. I think he is married, but I have never met his wife,” he said.

Gopal was brought to the home for the elderly by the local police in Vadapalani, who found him abandoned near the temple. While it shocked many, it was nothing unusual for the staff at the home. “There are so many in our home who have been abandoned by their family members. They are either forced out of their own homes by their children, or so badly treated and beaten that they are made to flee their homes,” said a staff.

An elderly woman whom this reporter met at the home was a typical example. To anyone who bothered to lend an ear, the woman recollected the story of her abuse and abandonment by her own children. “They are my children. I was the one who got them educated. They have completed MSc, and still treated me like this,” said the grief-stricken woman.

The inmates at homes like this are often left to die without being visited by anyone from the family. “It is extremely painful to see the aged go through this. Most of them suffer from mental disorders, which is one of the main reasons why they are abandoned, and such cases are sadly on the rise,” said the staff at the home.